July 27 — Alice Peck Day Health Systems in Lebanon, N.H., is pleased to announce the appointment of Melvin M. Aaron of Norwich, Vt. as the Associate Administrator of its Harvest Hill retirement community, beginning Monday, August 2. Ron Andrews, current Administrator of Harvest Hill and the Woodlands, will be focusing her attention on administering The Woodlands at Harvest Hill, APD’s recently built independent living facility.

Mr. Aaron has over two decades’ experience in long term care leadership. He joined APD in January as Administrator of the Recovery and Enhanced Care Center. He had served most recently as a consultant for Long Term Care Management Group, providing health care consultation services in the Northeast. Previously, he served as Administrative Director at Caritas Brooklyn–Queens Health Care in Jamaica, N.Y., where he implemented quality improvement programs that improved resident satisfaction, and as Executive Administrator at River Valley Care Center in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. 

He received his M.B.A. and MS in Health Care Administration from Long Island University in Brooklyn, N.Y. and is a member of the American Association ofHomes and Services for Aging.

Harvest Hill is an independent and assisted living retirement community offering on-site medical services, located on the Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital campus in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

On August 8, 2010, Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital (APD) will expand its capacity by five (5) beds in order to consolidate the care currently given in the Rehabilitation and Enhanced Care Center (RECC) under the hospital’s license. “We will be providing the same levels of care for the same number of patients, but in the hospital setting,” said Harry Dorman, Hospital President and CEO. Restructuring APD’s delivery of care allows it to better meet the needs of patients, position the organization for regulatory and healthcare reform, and more efficiently use its available resources.

The consolidation will enable APD to fully utilize its 25 licensed hospital beds. Projections for future needs of services for those the hospital serves in the Upper Valley indicate that the new configuration will be more than adequate. It also allows the hospital to convert most of its medical-surgical beds to single-occupancy rooms, enhancing the quality of care with a lowered risk of infection and increased privacy. Rehabilitation care will continue to be given in the Medical-Surgical unit.

Alice Peck Day will see other improvements from this transition. The move will help to prepare the hospital for anticipated health care reform by creating operational efficiencies. Dorman said, “We believe that consolidating acute and sub-acute patient services under one license is a responsible approach to addressing the stresses affecting hospitals today.”

Most of the RECC staff will be offered positions in the expanded Medical-Surgical Unit; however, APD will reduce its 500-member staff by eight positions as a result of the reorganization. “We regret this loss,” Dorman said, “but we will be assisting these employees with severance packages and are committed to helping them obtain other positions.”

In voting unanimously for the reconfiguration, the Board of Trustees expressed its confidence that this consolidation of services will enable APD to become a stronger community hospital while continuing to provide the personal and excellent clinical care for which it is known.

June 30 - The Sleep Health Center, a department of Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital, recently upgraded their facilities and added a new sleep bed to increase capacity for overnight sleep studies. “This will help us get patients evaluated more quickly,” said Lisa Stebbins, CRT, RPSGT, Cardiopulmonary Manager, “and improve our diagnosis and treatment strategies.”

In December 2009, the Sleep Health Center at APD moved sleep studies from the main hospital building to its facilities in the Medical Office Building on the APD campus. The move increased patient privacy and convenience. The recent upgrade is part of an overall plan for continued quality improvement, with a goal of one month from an initial consultation to treatment.

The Sleep Health Center specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders, including insomnia, sleep apnea, and restless leg syndrome. To learn more about the Sleep Health Center at APD, call (603) 448-7436 or visit alicepeckday.org.

On June 16, 2010, the surgical team at Alice Peck Day Memorial Hospital joined physicians, nurses, and surgical technologists from around the country in observing National Time Out Day. This annual event is sponsored by the Association of PeriOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), the Council on Surgical Safety (CSPS) and The Joint Commission, an independent national organization that accredits and certifies more than 15,000 health care organizations and programs in the United States.

Time Out Day was established to raise awareness about the importance of requiring the entire surgical team to pause and “take time out” before all invasive procedures. The team of physicians, nurses and surgical technologists pause to communicate as a group and confirm key information about the patient and procedure to help prevent medical errors from occurring.

This year, APD is implementing a new surgical comprehensive checklist that will start with each patient as they enter the preoperative area and carry through to the recovery room.  The Comprehensive Surgical Checklist was established at AORN with the help of WHO representatives as well as the Joint Commission. The new checklist utilizes and promotes the continuation of “Time Out,” but is now more expansive and will carry throughout the Surgical Services Department ”We in Surgical Services understand that surgical mistakes take place every day across the nation,” explains RN Phyllis Barrell of Surgical Services, “and we want to do whatever it takes to make sure our patients are safe during their surgeries and invasive procedures here. We know that a checklist can make surgery safer by improving communication surrounding patient care, and we recognize that these tools won’t work unless they are used within an environment that supports open communication among all members of the surgical team.  We feel that APD is the perfect environment for these tools to work.”